


escape wheel stops anchor (Supra)

by smallricochet



Category: Elsewhere University (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-23 09:08:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16616054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallricochet/pseuds/smallricochet
Summary: Q: If a student were to offer themselves as a pupil to one of the gentry/creatures or the campus, in exchange for knowledge, what would happen those students? Would they be never seen again?A: Are they clever enough to add an escape clause to the deal? On such things are lives resumed.





	escape wheel stops anchor (Supra)

Marjorie tiptoed around the wild mess of tangled branch that might have once been a rhododendron bush, skirting drooping lilies in little white bells that punctuated a mass of sharp brambles jutting out here-and-everywhere from the shadowed wildness of the trees. A boy held back in the shadows. He was holding a paper napkin.  

The sun was at half mast that day, it would be simple for si-lat suruq to winch back the day in fatigue of the eye. The girl had probably thought it was solar noon. Especially this close to the twelve farrowing rivers, the University, where star/blind humans tended to collect. Solar noon and early in the new semester, when the fae were cross seeding their newest fertile ground. It wasn’t uncommon for al-shaita to not avail a human of their funny little mistakes.

Marjorie checked the time. She didn’t have to reach into her shoulder slung pink purse to retrieve the watch, but from a pocket in her vest, where it was stored directly above her heart. You couldn’t put an age on Marjorie if you tried. She looked like someone who didn’t exist. The watch looked like it had been scratched and dirtied, in that order, but when opened like a precious thing, it’s components splayed open like bones exposed to the dew, from its microscopically twitching balance wheel to elaborate damascening in small spirals of inlaid silver and gold. The outside was carefully engraved with the letters  **N R M**.  The time was 6pm.

Five hundred years ago, (15,768,000,000 seconds in the numerical form,) the al-shaita were divided into this: al-jinn and al-yinn. Al-jinn were said to be as much a denizen of wild magic as could be defined, creatures of magnetic energy and carbon moving the earth like wind across a dune. Al-yinn were distant relatives, more moral and so more defined, and so more wont to shift on human desire. Practically speaking. In encompassing al-shaita in the middle of Appalachia, as the Gentry were not the only grouping present on the premises, it probably was an al-yinn. Al-shaita preyed on sin and darkness of the human heart, but practically speaking what they loved was  _fernweh_ , which was the short word for the following:

When Nia Ramira Moore was young and shut up among her mom’s room in the dusty reaches of Atlanta, her life was filled with sun. Simply this- Nia went outside every day, because all of the television was in Spanish, youtube wasn’t invented yet, and all the books were encyclopedias or a set of philosophy from the 20th century, and she went hiking through the woods.

When Nia came back many years later, the woods that had once seemed so tall and endless were little more than a patch of evergreen encircled neatly by semi-busy roads, she couldn’t tell if she was remembering wrong or if she was remembering an amalgamation of her time there, a pieced together vista of the places she had visited many times, her mind blending together an ever shifting array of forest and mountain paths that were so long and winding it was almost easier to get lost than to stick to the pounded in paths that probably led the right direction.

She had recently been invited to attend the 40th freshman class of Elsewhere University.

Bells gonged in the distance, signaling dinner rush. The cafeteria was opening. In the meanwhile the shadows shifted, the leaves and dead rhododendron petals of the abandoned garden rustling in a nonexistent breeze. Marjorie shut her eyes and waited, so still, and so silent, the dry and wilting ivy coated brick behind her seemed to twine more vividly and life-like into the sky. A purse popped like a bright pink stain in the air. Reid had to trace the bag’s straps up over a thin shoulder before suddenly remembering Marjorie existed at all. The bells came to an end.

The space warped and rippled beneath him, splitting apart like an imperfect circle, void inside a cauldron of a thousand silver stars.

“There!” Marjorie yelled sharply, and Reid jerked, it was like a ticking was filling the air, and the only stable point in the confusion mouthed  _Hurry_  to him, and gestured into a widening hole. It was like he had wandered into the middle of a desert, a gate sucking all life and space had opened behind him, just out of the corner of his eye. He blinked hard, a crack radiating light, and focused, and saw the widening stream of void was not white or hot, but was a shadow. He blinked, and it was a hole. He lurched forward, expecting resistance, and was surprised when he stumbled forward straight into empty air, like he had skipped a beat of his heart and had unexpectedly found himself hurtling off of the incorrect end of a balcony. 

The watch said 5:59pm.

-

From Earth looking up, there are 1 billion trillion stars. (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 in the numerical form,) fixed luminous bodies in the ten billion galaxies inhabiting the current observable universe. Under the soft canopy of trees, the night sky had the faintest shade of cosmic blue, so if you were being buried in a hidden deep-ground well, the silhouette of leaves feathered by underbrush carving a shadowed frame under a wide brushstroke of speckled glow was a small painting. And sometimes, if you stayed still long enough, you could notice the stars weren’t fixed at all. Rather, the whole thing seemed to be moving, like a slowly scrolling score. 

There was an urban legend about Elsewhere University. Really, there were nothing but urban legends, if you sourced dangerously enough. 21 years ago, a sophomore made a deal that she would always have the ability to find her way back home. She was a music major, as the legends go, and was had such a grasp of the chords in the earth and a moderate, dancing, beat she knew the fae would one day come to show her a newer countryside. 

If you tried hard enough, she thought, and looked hard enough on a certain hill at tangential angles to the sun, you could start to think the night sky was maybe a very deep and indiscernible blue. 

—

_Faerie-side_

The gestalt of Reid was that he lacked  _initiative_ , he was told, by the family lawyer who was packing his estate away in small, cynical checked boxes. His mom had finally passed, leaving him only a broken watch, his dad was in a maximum security facility on death row, and his aunt had left no will and the now probate estate was just about to escheat. He was alone and unloved, and besides, Reid was about to be very, very fucked. He was also about to turn 18, his lawyer reminded him, with an air of detached sympathy. He had nothing left to lose. 

The walls were white, the ceiling was white, and when he got shakily on his knees he froze, too stunned to make a sound. He was balanced on a single, jagged piece of glass. Underneath him, deep, deep, down and even through the white reflection, there was a city, a river flashing in between white and red rooftops like a snake in the sun. After a few moments swaying with vertigo, he realized he was looking at some kind of market, really, small dark heads bustling between stalls, spires that spiked crookedly into the sky, clothes strung on criss crossing lines, little dots of shifting life. Contrary to the span of desert below him, cold air lashed through his t shirt, cutting through him like he was hiking Everest, or some other snowy mountainside. He wasn’t dressed for it- it was late summer where he had just left. Maybe the cold was because he was several thousand feet up, he thought distantly, wind whistling so loud he had trouble focusing on anything but his terrified rabbiting heartbeat. The wind spasmed incomprehensibly across his neck, his face, his ears, like the white walls he had just seen didn’t exist, like the floor beneath him, there was nothing there. Reid breathed slowly out, counting one-two, like a six four beat. He carefully closed his eyes. His feet stayed beneath him as his heartbeat pounded against his throat, the swooping feeling of nothing giving beneath him. 

Reid discovered he missed introductory philosophy, no matter how boring and hopeless and incomprehensible it had been, and well, This was nothing compared to looking at  _Marjorie_ , he thought, and the reminder of  _hurry_  gave him the necessary burst of courage to open his eyes again, this time looking up. 

White. Himalayan wind was making his fingertips numb. Whatever he was looking at wasn’t lining up with what he could feel. He didn’t want to move. He would die if he moved. 

Shakily, he brought out the adder stone from his pocket, a wide hole worried through a specially smoothed rock, and put it to his left eye to look through it, to a startling pitch dark. After a moment, he rubbed his eye, and peered through the hole again, his vision slowly adjusting.  _I’m in a log cabin_! He thought, seeing a lowly lit and rustic room, illuminated by the glowing embers of a dying flame. It was very cold, as if no one had bothered to tend the fire in a long while, and the window was open. Snow blew in through ragged drapes, like it was blizzarding- and indeed, he could see nothing but dark flashes of white outside the pane, could hear nothing but the faint suggestion of wailing. The floor was made of wood.

Reid rubbed his arm, wishing he had more than a t-shirt, slowly surveying the room, back to the fire. He took a couple of steps towards it. “Oh, of course,” he said aloud. A cabin, cold and dark, in the middle of a frightening storm. And a dying heat. Keeping his right eye tightly shut so he was only peering through the adder stone, he turned away.

A stack of wood lay in comfortable disarray to the left of the window, there was a chair piled with fur blankets a few feet in front of a ramshackle door, shaking from howls of wind in it’s frame. Reid took a step towards the door. He thought of resting on the chair, which looked so casually human it was almost as if he was in a well-used dorm, the door shook like something slammed against it. Reid remembered there was no cabin without wolves, in those fairy tales that swirled around Elsewhere University like resigned, clever whispers. Somehow or another, you always ended up in those woods. 

 and against all his instincts and the aggressively rattling frame, he unbolted the door and heard a triumphant howl- and pushed out the door to face bright sun and the chirping of crickets. It was summer again.

Reid, feeling frozen cold, didn’t dare put down his stone until the suggestion of winter faded from his skin as he picked his way down the short wooden stairs. He quickly took the adder stone and slipped it into his pocket. When he took a quick glance behind him, there was no cabin, but the woods stayed where they were. He’d made it through the back entrance, he thought, the season now apparently in the proper time, and the woods around him a familiar palette of greens. 

The sun was noticeably lower on the horizon, even if he looked through his stone. He had wasted more than 30 minutes carefully avoiding anything that looked like a al-yinn mirror trap. “Much less than 6 hours,” he muttered to himself. 

At least he still had the napkin.

-

“A leyline!” Reid said, relieved to be back on more stable ground. “Like a power nexus? The one the school is built on?”

Marjorie nodded. “Yes, while that’s general, but several magnitude of orders larger. A space ley, which is why we have to do it at the same time she did it, at least copy by the year.” She groaned. It was a curious sound, like an abandonment of the moment, but it reverberated through the air to his ears anyways. Reid couldn’t help but wince at the noise. “ _Freshmen_. I don’t think I can explain-” she said something unintelligible, “-to you unless you sell your soul. It’s the going price for knowledge. It’s a shortcut.”

“What?” Reid said irritably. 

“Djinn don’t allow shortcuts without a trial,” said Marjorie, in a lecturing tone. “Even if it’s lazy. Usually fire themed. The obvious answer may not be the right one. But you’re probably going to have to make your  _deals_  with fae. I could tell you some easy ways to make gay and stay awake with them, maybe, if you stop asking me why they kidnapped your friend.” 

“Wasn’t it  _djinn_  who took her? Made a contract, whatever?” He said. 

She nodded. “Yes, the al-shaita. You read her contract. She purposefully wrote out details about time. She wrote out clause after clause. Not to harm her. Not to mess with her memory. Not to hold her against her will. The djinn must have got her to include nothing about ah, trading.”

Reid crossed his arms. “What’s wrong with that?” 

Marjorie gave him a flat look. “Well they traded her away, didn’t they? What’s the use of an escape clause if no one knew to fulfill it? Did you think they were going to  _keep her_?” 

“Well, why not? I don’t know anything about- al- sh- Djinn, and neither did Aunt Nia. If they’re so clever, why did they let her put it in the first place?” he said, somehow stung. 

She waved her hand. “Al-shaita like creative ih, well, that toying about might just look like torture to humans. But the more conditions she put into a bargaining stance, the more loopholes she let them have too. Any human would have trouble even trying a bargain like that with creatures that have been making contracts for hundreds of years. This girl was clever, leaving behind that watch and that contract, but trying to game deals with fae? She didn’t even actually get a fae! Clever, but not very smart.” 

“You can’t blame her for trying, if a single line in a contract might have saved her from eternal slavery!” said Reid, with a scowl. 

The Marjorie shaped absence nodded but said, “Well, that’s a matter of opinion, details, context, and the current solar year. It did happen a long time ago. For now, we need to follow the trail she left. Exactly.” 

“And I’ll pay you for this later?” 

“Yes, you can. For now, you don’t have to worry about it, I’m not a fae, I’m a tour guide, alright. Now quickly: time is a measure of distance, time measures how long it takes to travel through space. Space determines in what order and speed we experience time. But here at— Elsewhere University— there’s no fixed space or time, makes it easy for the Fae to wile their summers away, because nobody can catch them. But it’s lucky for you! Since they share space with al-shaita too.” She pointed at Nia’s pocketwatch, in Reid’s hand, which had had traces of burning sun, a weird frozen pearlescence, and a complete absence of movement despite the quiet ticking. “She did save some time in here! Or marked an outside existence of herself, at least. You said you found this in her belongings? If we can force the al-shaita to follow their contract, then all we have to deal with is a normal amount of kidnapping.”

Reid sat back suspiciously, because strange beings talking about kidnapping on the weekends was still offputting, no matter how contract-based they may be. “We’re going to….. kidnap Aunt Nia?” 

Marjorie sighed. “If we have too. But it’s still going, isn’t it? She’s probably alive.”  

“This whole- space ley timing thing, you saying we’re messing with some sort of — quantum physics? That’s why you kept bothering me about the dates?” 

“Yes, that’s what I’ve been saying! A minute is an hour, a loophole becomes a gate instead of a noose. Maybe you wouldn’t have to sell your soul to do this after all.” 

Reid considered the vaguely nauseating mystery of Marjorie-the-potentially-undead-lurker-outside-seventh-hour-practice-building. He did not want to stare at her very long. She went on, seemingly not noticing. “It’s very human, I think, to experience a lifetime in another person’s moment, and nobody else being able to tell at all?” Reid sighed. “This clock is proof of words, a contract that has meanings and understandings, but at certain times and places, they mean significantly less. But you’re special, trying to sacrifice nothing to get everything. Or, sacrificing everything for nothing- same thing, I don’t think you even know that girl personally. Are you ever going to tell me your name? Mine’s Marjorie.” 

Reid immediately never wanted to hear that name said aloud again. He let out a long breath, and placed the pocketwatch on the table. “My name is Reid.” He said, “There’s nothing special about that, or me.”

“But you  _are_  human,” added Marjorie, and gave him an indescribable grin. “And so you’re worth more than you think. It’s so nice to meet you. Say, do you hear that music playing?”

- 

Beneath Costa del Sol and el Playa del Carmen in the Yucatan Peninsula, running in underground rivers up to San Antonio and Albuquerque, outlined in the karst topography along the ley, peeking out from the cenotes in Mexico to the inorexable sinkholes in Del Rio, were a connected network of caves. 

Maybe not connected in the way humans were used to navigating, though. But the principle of the thing was: 

When rainwater filtered through limestone bedrock, it caused a co2 reaction with calcium carbonate that ensured the purity of water in the blank space beneath- everything filtered limestone and crystal- the sand, the water, the walls, yellow and white, translucent and gold. If the water drained out from those quiet pools, you’d only see the softening clear glow of something light blue under the sound of dripping. 

And on the 25th parallel, not on a ley most of the time, it glimmered without human interference, lime and quartz in the dark at half tide. Sometimes a human would wander in without knowing, with nothing at all but themselves, just be another human sacrifice to  _those things_ , leaving behind in that certain areas nothing the last of their bones, adding calcium sheen to the water, and then the pull would be gone, back to water and cave shadows connecting in the dark. 

-

_Djinn-side_

Reid woke up sprawled in underbrush. He briefly scrabbled with a fern that had been touching his face, and sat up with the disorienting feel that he had been awake all along, but simply drunk in some confused, waverish manner. He shook his head vigorously. 

Marjorie cleared her throat, where she was standing a little front of him and to the side, two feet away. Beyond her, there were trees. They must have moved a few feet from the garden- they were somewhere in the forest. 

“Oh, it’s you.” He said.  

“Don’t sound so excited,” said Marjorie, “We haven’t even made it up to the front gates yet.”

They both looked to the West, at the ivy covered steps that looked like they could have been white, originally, that lead up to a wrought iron gate that of such alien and intricate craftsmanship of small figures and confusing patterns that it couldn’t have been done by machine, and the dark column lined entrance that lay beyond that. If Reid didn’t already know he had been slipped into fairy space, this out-of-place structure would have put him on the right direction. 

“Suppose we just have to climb those stairs,” Reid said hopefully. He looked back, but Marjorie was already stomping away in the underbrush, at an exact right angle reverse to any kind of habitable human-laid path.

He leapt to his feet. “Aren’t you supposed to STAY on the paths?” 

“Not if you’re performing a kidnapping,” said Marjorie. She didn’t stop, as if she expected Reid to follow without question. He did, leery of the set of giant ominous gates that lead into some literary hell, for all he knew.

He questioned as he caught up. “Are we performing a kidnapping by getting intentionally kidnapped? Is that the plan, you- you- scammer? There is no way that giant hanging gate doesn’t lead directly into a Gentry’s kidnappy palace or something, humans aren’t supposed to overcomplicate things, that’s what the philosophy professor says, where are we going?” 

Marjorie turned to squint at him, her eyes glittering indescribably in the shadow of the trees, and also making a condescending calming motion with her hands. “Have you ever heard the story of the Castillo de San Marcos?” 

“What?!” 

Marjorie stopped abruptly at nothing. Before her, sunlight lanced through the trees. “The Castillo de San Marcos. We need to stay still until these searchlights stop going, anyway. Djinn are made of fire. They have a deal with the sun, which emits fire at certain 11 year intervals. A solar flare defined as a sudden, rapid, powerful coronal ejection, occurring when magnetic energy that has built up in the atmosphere is suddenly released, like a million hydrogen bombs exploding at once.” She pointed at a tiny clearing. “See?” At his blank look she put her thumb and forefinger in a circle around her eye. “Limerance.” She backed up to the trunk of a tree too wide to even hug, and slid to the ground to stare at him. Reid took the stone out of his pocket, and peered through it. Marjorie smiled like a smug cat when he sat down a few feet from her, shuddering. He started noticing little details, like, they were definitely sitting in the shade. “Yep. Listen close, Romeo. We’re going to have a little breather, and in the while, I’m going to fashion you a metaphor.” 

-

The year is 1672. The seaside town of St. Augustine is under constant attack as a valuable hold on territory between the French, Spanish, and English. The town has been burned down four separate times. So has the fortress. The Spanish are running out of wood, but have no quarries for limestone or cement. What they do have is a lot of shells, and sand. No one has ever made a fort out of seashells before. For good measure, they made a moat, which made 30 foot walls 20 feet higher. They are desperate. It’s all they have, and shell in lime at least won’t burn.  

Cannons fire into the wall of the newly improved seaside fortress, made with walls several barrels thick. English fire.

The walls swallow the sound. And then, they swallow the cannon balls.

The 100-gun fleet ships have never seen such a phenomenon, for no on had ever mashed up a bunch of shells and made a fort of it before to make flexible walls. More cannon balls are fired. They sink into the walls, and then plop unexpectedly, politely, back onto the ground.

The town does not burn down, and the fortress never falls to force again. Surprise! The shell cement was called coquina, by the way.

-

“So what have we learned?”

Reid tore his gaze off of the sunbeam and shifted uncomfortably in the pokey undergrowth. It was so hot bugs must have been crawling up his pants. Even though the sunlight had gradually faded from in between the branches, he could still hear strains of viola…. cello? something sweet and mournful with strings weaving in and out of the breeze, settling around them like speckles of dust, like they were still near the music building after walking- wherever they had just walked. “You’re- you were…. a history major?”

Marjorie stopped tapping Nia’s watch. “No. Romeo. I slave over the details, and this is the level of attention I get?” She said. “This is my important vacation story I learned in the Yucatan, come on.”

“How is the interpretive vacation fort history important?”

“It’s not interpretive, we know what happened. You want what you paid for? You paid for my vacation diaries. Unless you want to learn about my slightly more horrifying El Loupe Cueva incident involving astral projection, handsome young men, and hours of library trawling, you will answer the question.”

“I was distracted by the monster sunbeams. Could you tell me that story again?” 

After a long pause, Marjorie did. 

“A fort doesn’t have to be very high to be effective?” 

“Yes, sure,” said Marjorie with no visible indication of impatience, and spun the watch on her finger with the careless perfection of someone who did such things on a daily basis. “In this case, the wall is the Gentry’s due defenses, which is easy for humans to enter, but to leave needs some outside help.” It slowly spun to a stop. A muted ticking still came from it, even though the hands didn’t move. “Occasionally, the fae can be persuaded to make fair deals, they space time for the most part, but al-shaita must always be coerced- they deal with energy and order itself. However, they have a higher sense of honor. But you did miss the most important part.”

“And what was that?” Reid said snappishly, unable to help himself. Marjorie fiddled with the watch’s chain, staring at the scratches. 

“The whole fort was made out of  _coquina_. Ground up seashells. They had nothing else to make cement with.”

Reid thought it over. “I’m not really clear on what you’re trying to tell me,” he said. 

“It’s just a metaphor. I’m saying we have to work with what we’ve got, for results,” said Marjorie. “And all I’ve got to work with here is you.” She looked up. “Romeo, what’s your major?” 

“Undecided,” he said. Marjorie managed to transmit an unimpressed look. “I’m a freshman!” 

Marjorie ignored this. “Know any practical applications of organic synthesis? Theatre? Can you speak tongues? Perform rituals in  _voces mysticae_? Can you whistle, magic boy?” 

“I…. yes. I can whistle. But what, like…. illusion stuff? Coin magic?” 

“Oh- legerdemain. That’s the only magic humans have actually  _created_. Yes, that’ll do just fine.”   

She stood up to lean closer, and Reid felt a roiling of nausea, scrambling to his feet to step back.

“So, Romeo. Would you say you’re quick with your hands? Have you ever sung kareoke?”

“I…. yes?”

Marjorie nodded, and to his immense relief, made no further move to touch him. “That’s yours, Romeo. When we go in, you may have to speak. If you do, don’t respond to any wording that might winnow your skills away. You must-“ she mimed putting a finger over her lips. “not bargain what seems unimportant to you. Legerdemain is still a human-borne magic, and you have human-controlled value.

“We’re going to buy ourselves a little time.” She pointed to the watch. “But I hope you remember everything you see and hear- intelligence is what make humans fair game.” She looked solemn into his eyes. “If you try to bargain too much, speak too freely, you’ll lose your hands, your skill, your value itself- and then you won’t simply be irretrievable, you’ll never want to come back. You’ll lose existence itself.”

-

_Impulsive_

After walking a ways from the cabin, Reid noticed he was on a slowly widening path. Flowers curled at his feet, the sun shone softly through twilight- innocently, he could hear nothing but the gentle susurrus of leaves. Everything was in sharp detail. The leaves seemed a vibrant green, even the undergrowth seemed to still in the baleful absence of wind. Voice stuttering, he started singing, trying not to focus on the subdued glimmers of- maybe it was water- behind him. 

He imagined Marjorie’s textureless voice.  _“Well, this watch tells us which court they sold her to,” Marjorie said, “But I can’t go entertain the fae because of my own circumstances. So, I’m sorry, freshman. It’s part of fair payment. You’ll have to sing.”_

sing me a limerance. the fresh spring breeze said, a glimmer, the sweep of harsh giggling.

There was a story that when Elsewhere University was founded, (all the world in a moment’s story, if you indexed often enough,) a girl that had been good at playing the cello had been kidnapped by fairies. It was said that she lost her voice, her eyes, her heart, because all she thought to protect was her music, promised away from those who would harm her. The fae were wilder then, since Elsewhere University was more red than brown bricked then, even if the whispering ivy grew instantaneously over it’s walls. It was said when you were lost in the woods, sometimes you could hear her calling you home. But if only-!

There was a small winding melody in the woods on a 6/4 tempo and it sounded almost like a voice, a stringing echo like an enharmonic ghosting, pulling along like an old beat you practiced for years and then forgot, almost annoying in it’s commonality, if a human were so tired of it they didn’t want to hear that sprightly line anymore. 

Only if you were about to be lost. 

something looked into his gray eyes. 

Reid moved slowly, like a hapless student, casually shrugging his hand into his pocket and blinking at the silence in the air, the rustling of forest and a thought murmuring through his ear. 

yes, it decided, beginning to solidify, how you reach. do you want help? what’s your name? 

Reid started to see people. Or at least the suggestion of people, small and tall, and for a second he forgot he couldn’t see them after all, light blue and natural green, staring at him with arched eyebrows. His eyes moved apprehensively from fae to fae.

come over here will you come with us? we have a better place to sit, said one. A rustle of laughter moved through them like their skin settling on a color, it suddenly pushed him joyful, the corner of his mouth twitching up in a smile. His hand tightened around his napkin.

In the legends that swirled like dust around Elsewhere University, faeries liked singing, and dancing, and trades of value. Of what valued in what circumstance, as shaped by words and that intermittent burst of joy, the excitement that sparked in his chest when he saw the glamour and life flicker in and out, the knowledge he wouldn’t leave Elsewhere University even when it killed him, the heedless fondness that the fae took advantage of and tried to get in return. A secret, what he read, not a contract of binding words but more of reality- faeries lied like children; blatantly. Reid demurred, blinked long and wide, and the moment they thought he was so stupid, a wandering, lucky human, it was the moment he had them. His defenses were soft and impenetrable. 

Contractually, there were rules to the conduct of fae and supernatural in the woods and hills of Elsewhere University, even before language existed. Djinn with human desire, unlike faerie desire, clear and unstated differences in the realities between. Maybe Reid didn’t need to give up a soul for anything, because he had a napkin, a coin, and  _Romeo_. Because in belief, sacrifice was meaningless unless it meant something. 

When Reid was young his mother told him about the hole in her brain, a girl she could only remembered when she smiled in a glazed frame of mind, even if the paperwork of her inheritance was stolen by his father, even if the watch had no owner that could be remembered except in daydreams, even if there was no such thing as a watch that was never right no matter the time of day, like the incessant ticking was trying to tell her something. Like there were a faint outline of words written on the chain. 

Like his mom, Reid smiled in a dazed awe, because fae believed what you showed them. “Please,” he said, “I want to show you something.” His performance- hadn’t he seen limerance before? He tried to visualize that sterling gold white light bursting in the middle of the woods,  _limerance_ , so close and yet so far from the music department and a picnic bench next to the quad. He spread his hands out, in his hand he had a coin and a napkin. 

He could barely hear any strings, but he could sing along, familiarity like a weapon, a steadying secret shout. 

4 hours left. 

-

Marjorie had told him the hardest thing about purposefully sliding into a realm was syncing time. She said a lot of other things, too, but the parts about time kept catching his attention, like she was preparing him for the worst- that Aunt Nia would be a shriveled husk or something by the time they got to her. It was annoying. When she turned him over djinn-side, Reid was so fed up he almost stopped being curious. He was abruptly reminded of the dangers of non listening when as they walked away from the dancing limerance when they came upon an open field, almost like the scooped sandy beginning of a dune, and a black platform rising out of all of that like an exclamation mark. It was nothing like the wrought iron gates. Two sharp sounds of iron striking stone ringing into them, two human-like figures appeared, nearly 8 feet tall. Reid had not seen them at all two steps back. 

“Halt! How did you get in here!” Said a tall dark man in an almost shining white thaub, lined in intricate looping patterns of red and green, positioned next to the stairwell. Marjorie gave a cheery wave. Reid almost instinctively raised his hands at the aggression.

“Oh. Humans,” said his partner, scowling through the military neat folds of his gold lined white kaffiyeh. 

Marjorie put her thumb and forefinger in the shape of a circle over her eye and squinted at the djinn, for that must have been what they were. “Hello, al-yinn. Can we see His Excellency, or is he just really busy right now?” 

This caused a burst of confusion, and one of the guards spun their spears to level it at Marjorie’s blurry position. “Name yourself, human! Who are you to demand audience here?” The other one cocked his head, as if grinning. 

“I’m Marjorie,” said Marjorie, making an immediate feel of visceral distaste rattle through Reid’s system. He gagged, and glared at her back. It had a much more dramatic effect on the djinn guards, who shuddered and almost dropped their weapons, skipping back and away from her. Marjorie smiled, back straight under the sun. “Would you rather I nipped in through the back? I just thought it might ruin the best angles of your ah, mirror things.” 

“I’d like to see you try to pass those,” said the second guard, scoffing. His tip did not waver in the least.  

“Let them through,” came a different voice, warm and strong, and too close. In a blink of an eye, their surroundings folded, like still water- or  _glass_ , and Reid found himself up on a marbled platform, pillars on all sides of an open room. In the pavilion like surroundings, navy fabric draped, lined with tassels gradated like they had been dipped in twilight, a man lounged on a small pile of silken pillows. He was only wearing a sirwal of a red so dark it was almost violet, and had a disarmingly open expression, dark, feathery hair and eyes that were a shocking bright crimson. “Hello, human,” he said, and leaned up to sit forward, languorous, his hand on his chin. “So my dear, what would bring a lonely young man like you come see me in a place like this?” 

Reid was struck speechless on the spot. He heard Marjorie’s voice behind him, and the sound of heeled boots rapidly ascending carpeted steps. “Romeo!” she cried, as if alarmed. The beautiful man ignored her. 

“Oh, do come closer. Are you not going to speak after traveling all this way?” 

Blood in his ears, Reid stammered for a response. “I-I- why is- um- you, hello.” 

The man raised one eyebrow up. “Looks more than brains can allow, it seems,” he said, and briefly, his glance went behind Reid. The loss of his attention felt like a slap of frost, it shocked him into himself, like he had been forsaken by the sun. 

“Oh, a pavilion,” cut in Marjorie’s airless voice, from right beside Reid. Reid jolted. “Very thematically appropriate, your excellency.” 

The King’s face, because of course he must be a King, twisted into distaste. Reid knew when he searched Marjorie out he wasn’t going to be dealing with real people, but the concept of an entire world alien to his experience never hit him so much as this empty ephemeral wood, staring at a smooth dark arm move to a delicate chin move with the glow of an unrealized dream. “Ah…..” said the King, to Marjorie, “it’s  _you_. What do you want?”

“To confirm a receipt,” she said, stepping right in front of Reid. He recoiled from contact, irritated at the habits of Marjorie, and looked at the clean bit of silver watch dangling from Marjorie’s grasp. It took a strange amount of time to focus on the metal. “Tell me about this girl.” 

The King did not look at the watch. His skin creased perfectly, slightly wrong down disdainful lines, and it almost reminded Reid of a video game, pixel perfect models rippling in programmed rows, presenting in implication what it couldn’t compare to complete realistic fidelity. But the man before him wasn’t an exaggeration of stilted perfection, but more like a translation of irrepressible presence, fighting to fit into senses he did not have, from the liquid relaxation of the man’s shoulders to the inhuman glow of his striking red iris, coming back to land heavily on him. Reid found it difficult to look away. “What girl you refer to?” he said, with surety. “That thing you dangle is some human toy.” 

“This watch is part of a deal you made,” said Marjorie, “it has your handwriting all over it. You owe me.” 

The al-shaita ignored Marjorie, and deigned to glance at the watch. “Such a small favor isn’t a debt, you festering worm. This object was a human deal, wasn’t it. Claimed by, hm, an sidhe, at the last.” 

“So, you recognize it.” 

“In only the manner by all things are recognizable. For it’s worth.” He didn’t seem much bothered for it, leaning back against his pillows. “There’s nothing of value here. Just engraved words of a deal long executed.”

“You mean this is  _empty_ of value _, right now_. Please keep to your contract.”

The King uncoiled sharp as a snake, standing with his chin tipped up and an impugned look that didn’t match the intent leaking extradimensionally about his eyes. Reid’s hand froze over the adder stone in his pocket. “I broke no deal. My word for this thing is all I will give you! However.” He slowly turned to look at Reid. Reid barely blinked, transfixed. Smoke was curling off the al-shaita’s shoulders in delicate wisps of white, framing up against his face in such clean frame that even if it was constructed, it must have been put to brush by someone who was in love in every detail. Reid had never thought of smoke as something beautiful before. But coming from a fuelless fire like this, there was nothing that made the heat impure.

“A human’s valor for a human’s old contract. How about that?”

“No,” said Marjorie sharply, “That’s not why I came.” 

“I saw how you came,” the King’s voice came back, and a pleased smile slid over his features. “And you came as two. Only this boy can answer for himself. And of course, I can only take what he willingly gives.” The King turned to regard Reid. “Boy. Would you grant me your name?” 

“No!” was on the edge of Reid’s tongue, but he absolutely did not want to offend. Reid stiffened. 

“Oh, Mousling,” said the King, eyes crinkled, “don’t be so alarmed. It was mere courtesy, al-shaita do not work that way of fae Naming.”

But Reid could not tell his name to a stranger like this. “Your excellency,” he managed, “What if you tell my name to the fae?”  

“Yes, I could.” The king agreed. “But I would not intend to. Here we also speak plain- in our exact meanings. Unlike the faeries, we aren’t forced into this plane’s rules, we stay within ours, and you speak in our realm.” The djinn glanced up. When Reid looked up after him, all he saw was the cloudless sky, the sun bright in the afternoon. He startled as he felt a touch on his upper arm, and saw the King had stepped forward to examine him. 

“Did that  _half-thing_  say something to you? You are too afraid. Mousling, that thing is is working off a debt right now, to pay in human souls. Do you see how sickened you feel at the very thought of her? How she uses you to hear what she can not? She may have served al-Shaita and the Tuatha Dé Court for decades and she still does naught well but her duty of pulling the lost and drowning into the woods.”

Reid blinked at him, registering his words. It was like the King didn’t even notice the bones they passed on the way in, skeletons hung like careless decorations in piles under the beautiful, glimmering limerance. As if Marjorie was the one who needed to warn him of dangerous words of the way. “You’re- lying.” 

“I cannot lie,” said the al-Shaita, and his voice low and rueful, as if sharing a secret. “You will have seen for yourself.” His hand dropped to his side and he stepped back, onto the shallow platform of cushions. “I have just one trial for you, a single riddle,” said the King, smiling, so that he looked so handsome and radiant in the glowing falls of sunlight it almost made Reid want to cry, because a face like that should always be so at peace. “I’ll tell you something important about your human friend who owned the watch.”

“Thank you,” said Reid, feeling the urge to sit down to listen to his lilting voice forever. The tension of the visit didn’t bother him so much, now. The King said he wouldn’t hurt Reid, so he would not. In fact, it wasn’t right to stand while such a beautiful man should lounge so casually on a platform draped in resplendent red and gold. He felt himself step forward and legs fold as the man’s expression brightened, distantly aware of Marjorie on the peripheral, pacing and menacingly irritated.

“Oh,  _thank_  you. That half-thing might have not told you this, but this is a realm not only of fractals but of unremitting truth. So let truth reign. If you answer me incorrectly, you will just tell me a story. Yourself, if you choose. It is of no consequence. What matters is that it’s a truth, like the one I gift to you, as long as it is wholly correct in this instant. What grows up and sways, that submits and bends and never breaks? What can be impossibly strong and will falter not through death? What will never bleed but harm without form? 

Reid could almost see the aching meaning of his words, almost understood for a second how much brighter the world was in anywhere that things like the al-shaita inhabited. 

“Well, have you the answer?”

“I- um, cocona? No, I mean coquina?” said Reid, after a breathless pause.

The King stared at him. Reid stared back. “Excuse me?” said the King. 

“A coquina fortress,” volunteered Reid, “that bends and hasn’t broken, and doesn’t bleed, and harms morale.” He blinked, unsure. “Right?” 

The King withdrew his hand, which Reid just noticed he had been hovering forward to the edge of Reid’s shoulder, and leaned back on his draping fabrics. 

“Soul-thief.” The al-shaita said flatly. Marjorie’s footsteps stilled.

“Are we done here?” she said. “We’ll need until the midnight dawns. The deal was what was needed, fairy-side.”

“You bring here more of your tricks.”

“What, the boy’s answer? That was foreknowledge. He just has a clever mind. I didn’t warn him of your riddles at all. Let truth reign.”

The djinn sniffed, head languorously to the side, his face shifting older, shadows cutting darker. “Mousling. You answered with instant truth. A riddle that none yet have answered, but may have more than one solution- besides the greed of your human mind. You are a pure soul- the al-yinn may love your warm heart, come back if you wish for anything else. You have no other little requests, boy? I can offer you much more than a puny charm on a worthless enchanted piece of metal.” He said, all fire and compacted air, blowing too hot into Reid’s lungs. Reid felt himself blush, and opened his mouth to- 

“It’s silver,” said Marjorie. “It’s an empty vessel of precious metal, at least.” The djinni ignored her.

“I can give you wealth and security beyond your understanding or worry, that girl’s contract just to start. The humans brave and strong as you, who are capable of pulling the strings between life and death. This little creeping world you’ve seen bloom in the dark. Oh-! Ye human. Wouldn’t you like to know of the worlds you barely glimpse in the halls of that small locus? You stand before the King of al-Yinn, who you’ve already bargained once! I’ll trade you favor for riddle, there’s no need to worry about that  _thing’s_  proclivities.” 

“Do you always need to do this every time?” said Marjorie loudly, and Reid flinched from both of them. 

“I’m fine, thank you,” he said nervously. “Please just handle Nia’s watch.” It was almost a mistake saying Nia’s name, he felt it leave his lips and hang in the air, like a bell. 

“If you insist,” said the King when nothing else happened, and held his hand out towards the watch, which still dangled from Marjorie’s hand. “It so happens I have spent much time learning about the heart of a clock. Though this one is very crowded and does not hold much worth.” He sent a foreboding look to Marjorie, who stood the opposite side of the pavilion than Reid. “Even approaching a ley.”

“You filled it to contract?” She said. 

“It holds time. 6 hours of it.” 

“That’s nothing.” 

“Whether here, or there, I will give you no more than that. I  _owe_  you nothing. But if just to double-” He looked towards Reid, who even studying the side of the King’s face, could find no dishonesty or cruelty in his implacable grin. 

Reid dredged up a tremulous smile, and a polite shake of his head, which was immediately replaced by a lurching stomach as the absent feel of Marjorie’s hand latched around his arm and dragged him away. 

“Three times foiled, genie, time to go back in the bottle!” she said, her yell cracking through the air. 

“You think I would not crush you?” echoed behind him, in a voice resolute and only curious.

“Your excellency, you’d have to look at me first,” said Marjorie, and smiled. Reid could not even look at it, for it was ghastly. 

-

“That was easy enough,” Marjorie said, when they had ran back into the garden at the edge of the woods. “It’s not so hard, just say no, and we get a free little pass to the fairy realm. Don’t know why more people don’t do it.”

Reid rang out a jittery sigh. Marjorie, who was sitting across from him at a wooden lunch table, gave him a look of slight warmth. “Romeo, mind if I ask you a question?” 

“Go ahead.” 

“You might have noticed my existence is a mistake on the fabric of time and space.” 

Reid nodded automatically, and cringed. “No, well, I mean-“

“It’s alright. You’ve heard the stories. If people come to me, they disappear.”

Reid fiddled restlessly with his hands. “Eh, that’s what they say about like half the classes on this campus. At least with you the rumors were more ‘disappear’ then ‘found missing half a leg in’ the hammock study grove. Or if people disappear, that’s less proof than they came back but were replaced by a demon spirit wearing their form like Rachel the Accounting Major?” Marjorie seemed to emit an air of skepticism. “Yes, that was a month ago, I think she was trying to get a date. I’ve seen you watch the performances from- outside the windows.” He fell silent. “And I figured, why not? You’ve been here as long as anyone, even if you’re a ghost, or-” he gestured. 

Marjorie propped her bag on the picnic table and put her head on the bag to face him. “So you told your roommates you’d just go missing?” 

“Just for a day or two!” Reid felt in his pockets for his adderstone and dorm key. They were still there. “That’s normal, right? Freshmen party sometimes.” 

“If you say so,” said Marjorie. “A long time ago, I thought- well. Maybe nobody was  _trying hard enough_  to escape the written blood contracts you sign at the beginning of the school year? That maybe some of the contracts with the fae- have you seen them? They swipe humans even from orientation! I thought I could do something.” She looked past Reid’s shoulder, into the lovely, dark, picturesque forest beyond. “I couldn’t. Nothing has changed. I can’t even hear the music, even though I’m standing right here.” She closed her eyes, and Reid couldn’t hear music but the uneven bursts through the practice rooms, but had a feeling that wasn’t what she was talking about. “Nothing changed since the founding. Very possibly, nothing in this place… will ever change.” She sighed. “Except we can get wifi now.” 

“You’re helping me, now.” 

“But you got lucky, Romeo. The fact you told me your name was proof enough.” 

“Oh. I heard— I thought that was your price.” He didn’t. He thought it would make her trust him. She told him hers, after all. 

Marjorie let out a strange noise, and after a moment, Reid could pin it down as a kind of laugh, if he strained, he might have been able to make out the emotion in it. “I never said that, freshman, and I recommend you never do that again. Do you know what my payment is?” Reid’s attention sharpened. “This is how you can pay me back- two things. One, tell me what you thought. And I do mean  _tell me_.” 

“You’re just asking me… what I thought?” 

“About that al-shaita back there, ‘his excellency,’ you thought he was dangerous, right? You felt awed, scared, hypnotized, right?” 

“…Yes. Especially after the uh, limerance skull piles. The King himself was unexpectedly gorgeous, though,” he added, after a second. 

Marjorie made a sound that resolved into what might have been a laugh, and he could see her lips curl up into a friendly arc. “Well, Romeo, so romantic! Can you describe him  _exactly,_ and how you felt about the various bits of his appearance?” 

The implications of her grin hit him. “What? Why?” 

“In the pursuit of knowledge! And because it’s funny.” said Marjorie. “Now spill, I know he had an Arabic theme, tell me what he looked like for you!” 

“F-for me? This is absolutely part of your payment? What, you have no more vacation themed quandaries of book research and vacation to share?” 

She sniffed. “I’m only trying to help, aren’t I?” Then she paused. “Was that an invitation?”  

-

_“You should value your life more.”  
_

When Nia Ramira Moore was young, she was sent up to her grandparent’s house with her sister between the months of October and December, winter solstice, where there was an ever shifting array of forest and mountain paths that were so long and winding, it was almost easier to get lost then to stick to the paths for the right direction.

At the time, she didn’t know what freedom was, because she had never had anything else. In winter, two feet of snow would press up against the wooden porch, piled above the plastic house on the front lawn and a two feet soft pof of weight over a carpet of slick orange brown leaves scattered over a base foundation of mud, miles in every direction. In the summer, canvas hats were forced over her head and she sweated intermittently on all the hiking trails, leaning on the tall boulders of the mountain paths felt like a secret warming spell aiming to make her overheat. Spring made her sneeze. She could only remember endless flower gardens and miniature jungles shut up in great domes that flew so far over her head she gave up thinking about it, floored with blooms and plaques and mist and talking museum voices coming out of video ports. She lived in so many apple orchards and wineries and tulip fields that her eyes watering and nose went runny with pollen, but her grandparents were convinced she loved flowers, so she loved flowers. 

But the best part, most definitely, was the months between October and December, when the air changed and snapped crisp and started to smell like the beginning of Fall. Not wet enough to be muddy, not cold enough to be unbearable in coats that you could barely move in, trees and mountains were still pristinely climbable. 

Memories, however, are only alright if they weren’t all she had. 

There was a single set of books in Nia’s grandparent’s house in English, an ancient lot of fairy tale stories. The pages was water-stained, yellowish, had probably once been a creme-textured tome, and had thin pages with inked black illustrations every few lines. The first story she turned to was about the Aos Sí, the sidhe fae, the danger of squeezing blood from a rock and clever women who could fight off even the devil himself. 

She thought, are they really doing enough, not writing all of their words down? What could you say, to make sure you kept existing? She had a lot of time to ruminate over her mistakes.

At her second year at Elsewhere University, she heard about some old urban legends, numerous as the dust that swirled around corners, of music that you followed out of the pathless woods, from a student who was once a cello major. 

It hurt when there was nothing else to think about. 

-

Nia had a plan for her adulthood. When she grew up, she was going to be a watchmaker. It was a prestigious position, archaic, almost, in it’s lineage and craftsmanship. To be a watchmaker, you had to be intelligent, have an eye for detail, and have incredibly steady hands. Clocks had incredibly tiny components, after all, screws smaller than a millimeter wide, gears that coiled and ticked in precisely wound increments. 

She thought a mazelike contract like a watch wouldn’t be too bad, if every gear had a function and a time limit, even if it didn’t seem like it at first glance. After all, what did fae know about watches, anyways? They didn’t need the boring mechanics and study of human realities to keep track of something so mundane as seconds. They dealt with other things. They would always underestimate precision. 

Nia got bold in her second year, in making a contract that would unwind when time was up.

-

Reid found a girl curled in a knothole, eyes wide and stricken as if she had been hiding from someone. “Nia?” he dared. The body didn’t react, but he felt the name twinge between them, like a metal spool vibrating. 

Marjorie, the human-looking ghost of herself he had found just sitting inside the fairy hill, which was weird, pushed him out of the way to lean over the cocoon. Her voice gentled unusually, just like she hadn’t seemed to know who she was until Reid forced out her name. “Hey, sweetheart. Ready to come home? Somebody’s been waiting for you.” 

With prying slowness, the girl poked her night black head out of her hiding spot, a room far away from the dancing, and she looked not like a drained out husk or a panting ‘servant,’ or ‘page,’ but weird and pearlescent and wired like she didn’t quite know quite how old she was. 

But the girl that was probably Nia had moved her head out first, and that was what was important. If she had cringed away, that meant at some point, she had stopped fighting, and Reid thought that a broken spirit was harder to make escape in any dimension.

The girl stared at Marjorie’s brown hair, her pale eyes, her drawn and young face. “Who are you?” She said, quietly.

“Marjorie. This one is Romeo.”

Without warning, Nia’s eyes flew wide and she coughed, a single wet hack that unexpectedly sprayed blood onto her hand. Then she clambered out of the wall, heedless of the mess. “You’re human. You have to get out of here! You-“

“What?” Marjorie was still stuck on the blood on her lips, as was Reid. “You said I’m…. what?”

Nia wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Don’t listen to anything they tell you- are you two students? You’ve gotta-“

Reid slapped a palm over her mouth. Nia immediately quieted, eyes darting back and forth between them.

“It’s… alright,” said Marjorie, out of her apparent existential crisis, it was still strange to clearly see expressions on her face- “But we’re on a time limit here. Romeo?” 

“We have 2 hours, it took over an hour to get here,” said Reid, wondering why this didn’t feel tired or alarmed at all. 

Nia stretched, and looked at her hands, baffled at everything or nothing, it was hard to tell. “Why can I think? How can you touch me? What’s happening?” 

"No idea," said Reid. "Can you move alright?"  

Marjorie grinned. “Oh, you’re just waking up. You think this is hard, huh? Try being consistently aware in a world where there’s tomorrows. I’d like to see if you could adjust to that.”

Nia’s eyes went hazy, and she blinked. “How long has it been?”

Marjorie, who was still hovering in the back, gave her a sympathetic look. “Ages, really. I’d recommend fashioning yourself a new identity  _before_  leaving the university. They can do that with computers, now. Romeo, I have no idea how I know that.”

"Why wouldn't you know that?" 

"The last thing I remember is not existing until  you- said my name? How did you know my name?" 

"You told me, I guess?” At ghost-real-Marjorie’s confused look, some vague idea took place in Reid’s brain. But nobody had ever depended on him before, so he ignored her and waved his hand in front of Nia's distant face. 

She suddenly came to life. “My parents— their house-!” Nia said. 

Reid grabbed Nia’s elbow to start bringing her to the door. “It was- left to you,” started Reid, awkwardly, “they’re dead, but, things happened, we have to leave quickly-“

“It’s been bequeathed to you, as I understand it,” said Marjorie above the dissonant hum of music playing in the distance as she kept apace, “and passed to your hypothetical children intestate. I’d also recommend disguising yourself if you plan on going to get groceries.”

“My  _what_ \- who  _are_  you for real?” 

“Quickly, quickly!” Reid chanted, funneling them over into the hall half withered vines and weird sucking holes in the walls, he couldn’t wait to get back into the obsidian tomb section, at least the walls didn’t move there. 

“Oh, I don’t even know if I could say,” said Marjorie 2, casually, “This is interesting. You must have made a deal like I had. Nothing remained but your time, huh?”

Nia slumped even as her gait evened, she didn’t look so childish and insubstantial, but skinnier and longer. “I think- I was hustled. By fairies.”

“Well, cheer up, if Romeo is to be believed, this is a rescue operation. Very simple as an idea and a concept. You will recover.”

Nia perked up agreeably. “Well, this is much better than being asleep. So, who are you two to me, anyways? Why are you rescuing me?”

“I’m your nephew,” said Reid, “and I found your pocket watch.” 

“Someone asked me to,” Marjorie said with an easy grin. “And I didn’t have much else to do.” 

“Here!” said Reid, and ferried them all into a recognizably unnervingly crimson corridor, with red protruding horn things on the walls.

Nia’s steps slowed. “That's not the whole truth,” she said slowly.

“It is!” said Reid, peeking around the next corner. There were strange noises coming from the horn things that may not be horns, but the wider corridor looked more often used, but it hadn’t been there minutes prior. He was starting to think payment or not, he would be trapped in the faerie hill forever by sheer logistics. Bracing himself, he poked Marjorie, who was staring in fascination at Nia's realness. It felt just like poking a person, not too terrible at all. “Hey. Do you know a way out of here?” 

“Aw, poor sleeping beauty!" Marjorie said to Nia, "You must still be under a glamour. You don't have to question us that much. Keep moving your feet- at this rate, you’ll starve to death even before we find the doorway.”

“My contract-" said Nia, "I traded absolute truth for moments of time, in exact words. I traded away so much of my time, even though I left it to run with the watch, in the watch ‘Romeo’ didn’t lie about finding. I went into deficit, and I was taken. I can see every truth available to me. And you want to tell me the truth. Why won’t you?”

Marjorie frowned at her, seeming to come a little into the moment. “Astounding. At least you were really specific with your contract. You did get  _something_  out of them, after all.”

Nia continued to stare at her, and Reid was alarmed to see she was blinking back what seemed like tears from bright eyes. “Please tell me. I am going to be so pissed if I go home with absolute truth triggered empathy pangs for no reason after being traumatically kidnapped by sidhe overlords.” Nia sniffled and raised her napkin. “But you need to tell the truth or I’ll start bleeding from the face. I just remembered that.” 

"That's quite the demand! I have to tell you everything I know, even if I don’t know, or you’ll leave an incriminating blood trail behind us?” 

“It’s inconvenient, but true. If you really must keep your silence, I'll try to hold off on the bleeding to death as you two drag me towards freedom.” Despite the joking feel, Nia really did look sick and pale the longer she stood- like- some reality was catching up with her, as her time alined. 

Marjorie’s lips twitched, and she looked at Reid, who was staring at the both of them. “Alright, I don’t know if you’ll remember any of this, anyway. The truth about me: I traded away my existence, but much like you, left most of myself behind.”

“What for?”

“Knowing things, I needed to know something really specific,” Marjorie shrugged. “And I must know what I know, even if I can’t remember what the reason for what I do is specifically. Just like you, I was just a stupid kid. That’s all I got.”

A single drop of blood trickled from Nia’s eye. “Ok, not enough personal detail to "who are you," I’m sorry I even asked.” 

“Marjorie isn’t a history major, and she likes music but can’t play it,” blurted Reid, who decided to hell with it, they would all go down the bigger corridor together, it looked faster and the situation was getting worse. “She talks too much, and now she’s existing against contract. If you look at her too long, you get a migraine.” 

Nia stood up from where she had half bent over. “That’s almost enough! Lovely. I understand even less now. Hold on a second, do you guys hear that music?” 

Marjorie cocked her head at the both of them. “No, I never have. But I know that means you should follow it, even if I don’t know why. Go on.” 

“You should come too,” said Reid impulsively, and Nia nodded beside him. As they strode in a natural manner down the empty hall that seemed to twist like the vines overarching wild patterns above his head, and Nia didn't look at them too, instead staring off to the distance as her fingers tapped on a 6/4 beat. They eventually reached a thoroughfare, faeries and servant humans in a vast ballroom-sized tiered space, seemingly going up to infinity. He didn't look- Marjorie had already shook him free of a daze the first few times he had tried to actually figure out what he was seeing. But landmarks were another thing- there was no obsidian hall in sight, Reid noted nervously.

“I don’t know…..” said Marjorie, as they chased the fading tune in and out of hallways, “what I am, I was asleep, but you woke me up here, Romeo. I think it was a deal I made. If  _you_  two remember me after you get out, don’t even pretend that interacting with me like this isn’t mostly weird faerie maggyks right now, and that not feel the urge to vomit ether from the eternal call of the void that owns my existence, don't feel like you need to come after me- you might even follow that music out- I think it's happened before. I’ll try not to make my presence too trying on you in the meantime by smiling or anything too harrowing like that.”

Nia, who was wiping the last of her nosebleed on the napkin Reid had handed her, because Marjorie had yelled in alarm when she started to put blood on a nearby finely woven half finished spider web weaving thing in the banquet hall spun around to face her. “Is this your way of asking us to compliment you and a guilt trip come to visit, to make you feel better? Just to hear you complain?” Marjorie smiled, kindly, Reid could see. 

“I’m helping to rescue you, please be more grateful to my lonesome grandma ass.”

Nia huffed a laugh from under her napkin. “You’re not old enough to be a grandma, if that isn’t a truth. But-“ she coughed into her napkin scrap, “If I’m not mistaken, there’s one more thing hiding behind your face, itching at me. One more truth you should cough up, to make me stop coughing up.”

Marjorie regressed in maturity and pouted. “I can’t know what you're talking about! I know I'm older than you- my value is on knowledge, after all. As a good rescuee, you should be fine with hearing me tell you some fun facts about how not to die, and not keep demanding more, no matter what a princess you are.”

“Stop aggravating each other,” Reid demanded, “Ni-  _Gretel_  is already weak enough, if you make her cough or bleed any more we’re all going to be stuck here. 20 minutes left- and I have no idea where we are!” 

Marjorie took Nia’s other arm to support her drooping head, black but like a lily bell. “I apologize. I’m glad I came to find you. Thanks for saying my name, Romeo.” Her lips switched into an easy grin. “You wouldn’t believe what I normally have to deal with. Wayward elfs and you children gagging all near me just on sight!”

“I am certainly…. no…. child,” said Nia, squeezing Reid’s arm in thanks. “but it’s great we’ve, got this far. Thanks for helping……. both of you.” 

Marjorie, who had curly brown hair and a reckless tendency to smile, suddenly stood very still, and sad. “You  _are_  good children,” she said, “And I’ll hope not to see you again for a long, long, time yet.” She pointed at a nearby set of leaves, draped artfully over the walls. “Here’s an exit. Goodbye- ouch!”

Nia lunged out to grab Marjorie’s arm before she could step away, pulling her body to her and overbalancing into Reid’s. They all staggered to the entrance. “No- here's the truth I want. Answer me. Are you a cello major? Did you play the music that leads everyone home?” 

Marjorie looked inconvenienced, squashed between the wall and Reid and Nia. Reid turned to look at her too, because even though he had been hearing so many legends around Elsewhere University, this wasn’t the first time he had heard something something something about music that played at the edge of panic in the woods. But only if-

“It’s a yes or no question,” said Nia, determined. “But I haven’t walked, eaten, or seen the sun in 11 years, and I'm _really feeling that time_ , and so if you don’t answer right, you very well may leave me to bleed out to die, and not rescue me at all. You’re a woman who made them mess up a contract too, right?”  

Marjorie stared at her, and Nia stared steadily back. Her face was open and blank, like she was about to not answer. 

Time moved in skips and jumps, that was why the music was so hard to hear on that even beat- the sun was coming up over the horizon, there was 15 minutes left. Reid thought he could let this drama play out, turn back to chase Marjorie-lesser-mysterious-touchable-ghost down, let Aunt Nia shake the truth out of her.  

Reid gently disengaged his Aunt Nia’s hand from Marjorie’s old fashioned dress collar. He could touch both of them with no discomfort, and he remembered something- Marjorie and her endless chattering, saying things he never could know until it happened, like she was never not trying to help him. He put a comforting hand on both their shoulders. Marjorie had filled him a watch, a one way back road ticket to the faerie, and it’s intended owner, and Marjorie definitely did not want to leave. But hey- she didn't exist. 

“If this isn’t a rescue, then it’s fine as a kidnapping,” he said, and recklessly shoved them all out the door.  

—

_Decay_

They came out of a garden door near the music building at midnight on a Tuesday. The door slammed shut, and disappeared. Reid almost fainted on the spot from the sudden brick of exhaustion that sunk into every part of his body, like he had been staying up for 48 hours straight.

He heard Nia crash down beside him, he heard a short, surprised Marjorie-like shout. Then silence. There was no time ticking in his heart and head, the grass didn’t move like there were spirits in the Earth, nothing shimmered or swayed. The ground felt so comfortable it might as well have been a feather bed. 

Nia didn’t make a single sound. Reid dragged up first his torso on aching arms, then pushed himself to his knees, and sat there, staring wearily at the girl who owned his mom’s silver pocket watch. Her chest rose and fell. Behind him, there was just a closed garden door. 

“Pst, Romeo!” Reid looked back. Marjorie gave him an open smile from the shade under the treeline. “You made it back! Is that your Gretel?” Reid squinted dubiously at Marjorie. 

“…What?” She said, after a while. 

“You don’t know?” 

“Romeo,” said Marjorie, frowning like he had hit his head. “Where’s your-“ she circled her forefinger and thumb around her eye, and Reid automatically patted his back pocket. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Marjorie relax, and move closer, disengaged from the shadow of the trees. He had never seen her do that before. 

He took out the adderstone, and looked at her through it. “Huh,” he said. 

“Checking people through that is just standard security, Romeo,” said Marjorie, inspecting the crumpled mass of girl sophomore on the floor. A pocketwatch with a silver chain thunked to the ground in front of Reid, it glinted silver- but not with it’s usual odd, frozen, pearlescent shine. “Don’t give out free information to strangers, and especially not your name. Or someone might have to come looking for you, one day.”

Reid felt his back go up again. “Thanks for helping me find Nia,” he said, direct. He swallowed. “Marjorie.” Marjorie looked back, expressionless and woodenly still. “You really helped, too.”  

Nia made her awareness known via long whimper, as if she had been merely passed out after being hit on the head. “Ooh,” she groaned, her throat sounding dry and raspy, “I’ve missed….. so much class.” 

Marjorie grinned, and Reid marveled he could make out the natural expression on her, the fact she was standing in the sun, distinct from shadows. “That’s alright, hotshot, they have a whole procedure for reintegrating people who party too long nowadays.” 

Nia tilted her head to look up at Marjorie. “Good, so you really did make it.” She mumbled. Marjorie frowned in confusion, and Nia’s eyes widened as she hurriedly went on. “I mean, almost? Definitely? Partially, the bit we found. That’s true. Oh heavens, this contract is going to be so much trouble, I can’t even lie to myself.” A trickle of blood ran out her nose. 

Marjorie felt around her bright pink bag, and produced a bottle of mysteriously unlabeled water. Reid eyed it suspiciously, but Nia wiped her nose and took it with a thankful groan. “Your contract sounds messed up,” Marjorie said comfortingly. 

“Takes one to know one,  _Marjorie_ ,” said Nia, and was too busy downing half the bottle in a single gulp to see the way Marjorie looked like someone had just struck her with a baseball bat. To Reid’s surprise, Marjorie’s name ringing through the air didn’t even make him shudder. He considered saying it again. 

“Well,” said Marjorie to the both of them, “I would certainly want to know what happened in there-“

“I came in search of a very smart girl,” muttered Nia.

“We saw something you should know about, Marjorie,” said Reid, sounding more exhausted than he meant to. 

“-But I see that’ll have to wait.” Marjorie retrieved the pocketwatch from the ground and put it gently into Nia’s hand, who grasped it almost automatically. 

“You have like 15 minutes to sleep until Philosophy 101, freshman Romeo,” said Marjorie, shuffling around her bag. “And I don’t recommend sleeping. You know the consequences for skipping, hm,  _that thing_. Though courtesy between species is very dull. You can drop Nia off in the infirmary, at least for a few hours. I’ll watch the door.” She handed a crinkled piece of paper to Reid, who saw it looked like some kind of illegible note. “In case you’re late,” she said, with such a sympathetic look Reid resolved never to know why. He shoved it in his pocket, and got to his feet, supporting Nia under one arm to her protests. 

Marjorie watched them both until he had staggered back within the gates of the Garden Path, the peek of night black hair steady on his shoulder. 

Marjorie picked up her faded pink purse, which only had what it needed. She walked slowly to the end of the low wall, her hand trailing on dead reams of ivy. In the distance, she could hear waves lapping on a far shore, a too-loud glint of laughter from a sussurus of muttering conversation. And waited, to see if somebody could come, remember her, if she could collect herself, and with tremendous luck and alignment, even remember the space in gratefulness to not slip from the subtleties of human memory. Nothing changed, but nobody remained unchanged in the University, where the ground was filled with limestone and karst geography, that dripped into pure dark waters that could come from the rains of magnetic solar flares. 

Time moved on. 

**Author's Note:**

> https://elsewhereuniversity.tumblr.com/post/174952706552/if-a-student-were-to-offer-themselves-as-a-pupil


End file.
